One of the relative failures of much of the multicultural education literature is the failure to connect educational inequities with larger sociopolitical conditions. Too often everyone falls into the trap of discussing educational sexism, for instance, as if it is disconnected from global abuses of women's rights. Perhaps nowhere is this disconnect more pronounced than around the issue of classism, where everyone tends to focus on the so-called achievement gap or teacher expectations, but too often fails to connect these with the lack of living wage jobs in the US, the deterioration of labor rights, the growing number of children without health insurance, or even the privatization of public schools. In fact, the resurgence of deficit theory and the "culture of poverty" myth has distracted everyone from these considerations, giving them permission to focus their energies on "fixing" poor people instead of the conditions that necessitate and cycle poverty. This article provides resources that push back against the deficit theory and culture of poverty grain, centering the conditions that propagate systemic classism; that continue to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many; that underpin neoliberal policies, like No Child Left Behind, more concerned with corporate profit than economic justice.